Some Thoughts on Venezuela

Foreign adventurism distracts from Trump's crucially important domestic agenda.

Bombing Venezuela and toppling its government by seizing its President, Nicolas Maduro, was unwise. I encourage President Trump to swiftly bring American military involvement in the country and Latin America more broadly to a close.

There is nothing worth having to be gained by monkeying with these third world socialist dictatorships. The juice simply isn’t worth the squeeze.

I do not say this in order to attack the President. Trump has won a number of key policy victories (such as securing the southern border and increasing deportation funding). His very existence in office has been good for the American people considering the utterly insane alternatives.

I have always known that Trump’s views on foreign policy differ from my own. I do not feel “betrayed” by the President. The histrionics from some on the Right over Trump’s actions is embarrassing.

It would be better for non-interventionists to take accountability. For my part, I consider it a personal failure that since Trump has been in office America has launched the attack on Venezuela, bombed Iran, continues to supply weapons to Ukraine, bombed Nigeria, and still maintains troops in Syria. Were I a better rhetorician and scholar, I would be able to convince Trump’s advisors, republican legislators, and even the President himself of the monumental economic and political benefits they could secure for themselves and their fellow citizens by taking a different tack. Were I a better influencer, then I would have a larger audience of patriotic Americans who could be mobilized politically in favor of a better, sounder foreign policy.

But there is no point in whining about failure. And there is certainly no point in attacking Trump.

What we need now is clear, cogent analysis that reveals a way in which President Trump can better achieve his domestic and foreign policy goals. It is my desire to see the President succeed in office, to see JD Vance win the presidency, and to see the American people prosper in safety and security.

The Goal of Foreign Policy

To understand why the Venezuela operation was a waste of time and resources, we need first to go to the heart of the matter: what is the purpose of American foreign policy?

The easy answer is “to secure our interests.” But this raises a further question: what are our interests?

This is where things get tricky. The definition of “interest” is infinitely malleable. In the right hands, America First could easily become a doctrine of overthrowing every foreign government on earth that is even vaguely suspected of antagonism towards us.

Therefore, I define interest much more narrowly and clearly. In my view, the purpose of war is to secure peace. Our first interest is protection in the literal sense: securing the American homeland from invasion by foreign military forces and from aliens that kill and maim the bodies of American citizens.

I am in the Founding Fathers’ camp on foreign policy. The Declaration of Independence says “the powers of the earth,” occupy a “separate and equal station” by right of the law of nature and nature’s God. The Declaration defines the power of “Free and Independent States,” as follows: “they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances,” and “establish Commerce,” among other powers. The Declaration states that America shall hold “mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”

For the Founders, the nations of the earth, even the stupid ones, are equal. Each nation has a right to make war, alliances, and trade relationships as it sees fit. The Founders believed that a policy of leaving each nation to itself best served America’s own interests.

The alternative to this framework is that the United States is currently locked in an endless, amorphous, and permanent war with virtually every country on earth. That view is, implicitly, quite common in DC, as a matter of fact.

George Washington says in the Farewell Address that “Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest.” John Quincy Adams counselled Americans not to “go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Adams goes on to say that America, while the well-wisher of freedom everywhere, was the vindicator only of her own. Adams warned against imperial expansion: “America might become the dictatress of the world” if she did so, but “She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

One need only to see the vast expansion of taxation, the national debt, the military industrial complex, our 17 intelligence agencies, and the federal government’s surveillance powers to see the truth of Adams’ warning. Foreign intervention has not been good for us.

Washington was right: our interest, our good as a people, is best secured by harmony with other powers whenever possible. By “liberal intercourse” Washington means trade. He advises that America adopt a “commercial policy” that is “equal and impartial” towards all nations. America, our first President argued, should consult “the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce but forcing nothing…”

For Washington, Americans should make money off of trading with foreigners but we should not monkey with their endless and stupid domestic political problems. In practice today this would mean a regime of low taxes and regulatory restrictions at home combined with a strong border policy, restricted naturalization of foreigners, and a defensive foreign policy that avoids military involvement, especially in the third world.

Venezuela

This brings us to Trump’s decision to bomb Venezuela and seize its leader, Nicolas Maduro, by force.

I hold that this operation was not a good use of time and resources.

This is not to say that Maduro is good or that we should shed tears for the moronic socialist regime in this Latin American backwater. Far from. Instead, my point is that the opportunity costs of monkeying with the Venezuelan regime are not worth it.

Venezuela is a poor country with a stupid regime. Maduro is an idiot and clown, who spent his days as President dancing on TV and singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” as a political statement against American imperialism.

But there is nothing that Venezuela can do militarily to the United States as long as we keep our border secure. Venezuelan combat troops are not about to land in Miami. The Venezuelan Air Force (which has about 15 working aircraft) is not about to carpet bomb DC. Venezuela does not have nuclear weapons. Even if it did, it wouldn’t matter. The Soviet Union had tens of thousands of nukes. It didn’t prevent their communist regime from imploding.

Sending in Delta Force, backed up by 125 top shelf American aircraft, to go kidnap a geriatric socialist is not as impressive as the Pentagon makes it sound. It’s like listening to your buddy brag about picking up a 300lbs blue-haired landwhale at the bar. Yes, that’s “success,” but, uh, why?

The biggest threat posed by Venezuelans to America today consists in Venezuelan criminal organizations located in the United States and in the leftist voting habits of naturalized Venezuelan migrants. US census data indicates there are more than 700,000 Venezuelans living in the United States.

If we want to prevent this third worlders from doing damage to our political order, we could start by… not letting them move to our country.

Every problem we have with Venezuela today could be solved through the cheap (and boring) method of securing the border (which Trump has already done) and repealing the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 that permits large scale third world legal immigration to the United States.

Arresting Maduro does not solve the latter problem. In fact, the political capital spent on arresting Maduro will likely distract from efforts to reform our fundamental immigration laws.

From this point forward, after Trump’s comments that we are “running” Venezuela, any political disturbance or problems in Venezuela will reflect back on Trump. This isn’t fair, but it is inevitable.

Venezuela is still an impoverished, socialist dump. It is going to have problems. The problem with running Venezuela is that now we have to run Venezuela. This is almost certainly going to be a headache, but even if Trump succeeds in making Venezuela great for the first time, this project will take up time and resources that would be better spent elsewhere.

The military operation costs money, manpower, and sheer thought. Every moment that American diplomats, policymakers, and advisors spend thinking about Venezuela is a moment they could have been thinking about literally anything else.

Nor does it make sense to say that we should have overthrown Maduro because he is an anti-white communist. He is, of course, but we have anti-white communists here at home. Right now, we are still pouring billions of dollars into American universities that constantly preach hatred of ordinary Americans and American heritage.

If we want to strike a blow against the left, we should start there.

Oil wasn’t a good reason to invade Venezuela either. For one, if we had really wanted Venezuela’s oil, then why were we sanctioning the country? It is true, buying oil from Maduro’s government would have put money in the pocket of Venezuelans. But that doesn’t matter—American firms buy oil from the Gulf States and they are all deeply corrupt. So what? The goal is to lower prices for Americans, not to worry about what random foreigners do with their money.

Even more, increased prosperity in Venezuela because of foreign trade would help mitigate the worst economic evils there and thereby reduce the pressure pushing Venezuelan illegal immigrants to go to America. This is a good thing. We do not need more Venezuelans becoming Americans.

To top it off, a functioning foreign trade and growing prosperity would have put the screws on the socialist government to protect property rights in order to secure prosperity. In the long run, it would make Venezuela less dysfunctional in practice.

And if the socialist government refused to sell even in a world without sanctions? Well, that isn’t our problem. To take just one example, we have 11 billion barrels of untapped oil reserves off the coast of California that the state has banned from drilling for more than 30 years. Trump, to his credit, is trying to rectify the policy. Still, if we need oil, reducing environmental regulations and lowering taxes here at home are the way to go.

The Economy

Trump, in a pre-Christmas prime-time speech, made the state of the economy a central feature of his presidency. He was right to do so. Americans voted him into office for three major reasons: inflation, immigration, and Biden insanity.

Trump has done a great job on immigration, obviously put an end to the Biden era, and has done real damage to the political and cultural clout of the radical left. The economic damage of the post-COVID world still lingers, however.

Thankfully, it is very simple for Trump to help the economy: all he needs to do is cut government spending. Every dollar the government doesn’t tax or borrow (future taxation) is money that remains in Americans’ pockets. That means prosperity. If you don’t take people’s money then they will have more of it. It really is that simple.

Cutting government spending has huge political benefits for the GOP, as well. Let’s go back to the Department of Education, for instance. That agency transfers a little under $270 billion a year from taxpayers into the hands of leftist academics. That is about 1% of our GDP.

Cut that funding in any way and not only does Trump put that money back into the pockets of his voters but he also breaks left-wing institutions that actively work to make America a worse place to live. Win-win.

In fact, virtually all government spending is like this. 60% of federal bureaucrats preferred Biden to Trump. The more of these people Trump can fire or defund, the better.

The Cost of “Successful” Foreign Interventions

Compared to economic growth, the political payoff of successful foreign adventures is much lower. George HW Bush oversaw two apparently successful foreign military interventions. He initiated the rapid lightning victory against Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War and the intervention in Panama that resulted in the capture of Manuel Noriega on drug trafficking charges (among other things) in 1990.

Both operations were, from a military standpoint, successes. The United States unsurprisingly was able to curb stomp both third world countries with ease. Even so, Bush still lost re-election because of economic discontent.

The Noriega case is particularly relevant. Indeed, one could argue it is the closest thing to precedent that we have for the seizure of Maduro. Unfortunately, the operation meant very little in the long run. Arresting Noriega didn’t prevent the outbreak of homelessness and crime currently afflicting American cities. It did not prevent the spate of overdose deaths that have harmed so many American families.

In turn, arresting Maduro won’t change this system. The market for illicit drugs in America exists because a substantial portion of the American population wants to use those drugs and will pay the price in money and health risk to get them. That longing for drugs will exist even if we could put every Venezuelan on earth into prison.

There are deeper problems here regarding the nature of the American administrative state, the government-sponsored monopolies given to pharmaceutical companies, and the history of American drug and welfare policy that requires a much longer analysis.

But there is a simple, easily accessible solution. If we want to reduce homelessness, overdose deaths, and crime in America, we can start by more aggressively enforcing the law against serious criminals here at home.

Cracking Down on Domestic Crime

The key problem in my community of Hillsdale, Michigan—and in communities across the country—is an unwillingness to punish crime. Drugs might be technically illegal but their use is so widespread that law enforcement in most jurisdictions simply doesn’t put teeth into the laws against using them. Sure, they throw a certain percentage of dealers in jail but it doesn’t matter. The problem of users committing crimes continues apace.

These criminal drug addicts end up on taxpayer-subsidized welfare, their anti-social behavior is tolerated, and their serious crimes go unpunished all out of miscalculated pity. In Hillsdale, for instance, a drug dealer opened fire on two customers during a dispute in the parking lot of the local library. He then chased the two men in his car after they sped away, running a different car off the road in the process.

For this double attempted homicide, drug dealing, and attempted kidnapping he received… probation.

In other words, the fact that drugs are supposedly “illegal” made no difference in the concrete reality in my community. Lax law enforcement, soft on crime policies, and an unwillingness to crack down on anti-social behavior (both by those on and off drugs) has contributed to growing social decline.

Monkeying around in Latin America doesn’t solve these problems in Hillsdale County. The resources spent to seize Maduro would have been better spent on arresting murderers, thieves, and trespassers in America. They would have been better spent repealing our absurd immigration regime that keeps Democrats in power.

In the end, my critique of Trump’s actions in Venezuela is less about foreign policy and more about focus. Where is the best place for MAGA and the American right to put its limited energy and time? I argue that we should focus on boosting domestic prosperity, cracking down on crime in our cities, and breaking taxpayer-funded leftist networks here at home.

Tucker Carlson called the capture of Maduro a “pivot point” in American history. That is a major stretch. My guess is that the incident will mostly be forgotten within two weeks. The news cycle will move on. The generals will all get medals and new defense contractor gigs. Venezuela will still have bread lines. Hillsdale will still have homeless drug addicts.

Trump isn’t evil for wanting Maduro gone. He is not a fool for wanting to do something about the overdose crisis. He is right to want more oil on the international markets. He is right to be disgusted by Maduro and his clownish antics. He is right to want America to be secure.

The point of my analysis here is to urge the President and his advisors to focus their resources and energy differently. The best strategy going forward is one of foreign policy restraint. Ending America’s wars abroad will be better for Trump in the immediate and long term than starting new ones. The economic rewards alone of geopolitical stability will be enormous.

Keep the focus here home rather than abroad. Changing domestic policies is harder than bombing foreign countries, yes. But the payoff is much higher. Trump still has a lot of goodwill and margin to push a pro-prosperity, pro-law and order, pro-America agenda right here on our soil.